Make LEGO the Star of Christmas
Award Category
GRAND PRIX
Agency
UM
Client
LEGO
Collaborating Partners
Ensemble & One Green Bean
Sponsor
Objectives
In the year following the highly awarded The Lego Movie, UM had the ambitious task of outperforming Lego’s previous Christmas sale period success despite a reduced marketing budget. The campaign had three success metrics: increasing sales by 14% year−on− year, increasing social engagement by 50% year−on−year and retaining the brand’s number one position.
Campaign
To boost the interest around Lego over Christmas, the strategy was to embed the brand into one of the key family rituals of the season — decorating the tree — by framing Lego as a way for families to customise the star on top of it. Core to the campaign was a 32ft Lego Christmas tree, which was unveiled in Melbourne’s CBD. To build a customised star for the giant Lego tree, father and son Lego master builder team, the Steiningers, were called in to build a huge star to look over the city. To inspire families to get involved, Lego partnered with NewsCorp to create instructions on how to build their own stars. MCN also created a mini−content series showing videos of families working together to build their stars. Lego also launched a competition rallying its club members to build and share their family stars for the chance to feature in a TVC. In two weeks, more than 3500 stars were received. In addition, influencers were used to reach mums by highlighting the bonding experience of building a Christmas ornament with the family. Following the competition, five custom versions of the Lego TVC, each featuring a competition winner’s star, was used to build mass awareness of the campaign.
Results
The 2015 campaign became Lego’s star campaign after producing its best ever Q4 sale results and a huge uplift in social media engagement, all despite a 10.5% reduction in budget from the previous year’s campaign. Sales increased 18.8% year−on−year, 4.8% above target. Social engagement hit the highest the brand had ever experienced, at 287% — 237% above its target. Lego also retained its number one brand position.
Judges Comments
“An inspiring piece of work, which generated an ‘I wish I had thought of that’ reaction. Lego played to its strength, which is that they exist in most Australian households, however deciding to expand into enhancing a cultural truth - that building the Christmas tree is a family ritual - was a smart move and helped to make the brand relevant. This was a great campaign idea that was executed well and travelled seamlessly across multiple platforms.”
